The Southern border was not a suggestion. It was a wall you could not see until you tried to touch it.
Along a span of mountains, deserts, and river gorges, the Viserion crown and its allied beast-blood families held a continuous cordon: hard checkpoints cut into stone, Aetherite ward-towers every ten kilometers, drone nests, buried sensors, and quick-reaction flights on hot standby. Locals called it the Iron Line. The Abyssal Kin called it other things, most of them curses.
Just before dawn, the Iron Line lit up.
On the palace command floor in Valdris, wall screens flipped from night maps to live feeds. Satellite passes, high-altitude drones, wardline telemetry, and checkpoint cameras all told the same story: increased pressure everywhere the border touched wilderness.
